Introduction: Although published in 1898, the statement in the article that "thirty-six years have passed away since Sir Charles Bright laid the first Atlantic cable" dates its writing to 1894. One of the ships described in the article is CS Silvertown, whose Third Officer in 1892/93 was Basil Combe. Combe's journal of his Silvertown voyage provides further insight into life on a cableship in this period of rapid expansion of the cable network.

HIRTY-SIX years have passed away since Sir Charles
Bright laid the first Atlantic cable, and the younger generation know nothing of the
immense enthusiasm which the great project evoked among all classes at that period. Owing
to errors of construction this cable did not last long; but when, seven years later, the
second attempt was made, all the former excitement was revived. Special correspondents
accompanied the expedition, and the progress of the work, as reported daily through the
cable, was followed with the keenest interest. On its successful completion the problem of
deep-sea communication seemed definitely solved, and subsequent cables attracted little
attention. But the work of submarine telegraphy went steadily on, and at the present time
there are ten Atlantic cables, with two more in course of construction: while thirty-six
telegraph ships are employed in laying new lines or repairing the 130,000 miles of cable
already at the bottom of the sea.

Before a cable is laid
it has, of course, to be made, and all the cables now in existence
have, with a few insignificant exceptions, come from three large cable
factories on the banks of the Thames. Till within the last four or
five years England was the only country which manufactured submarine
cables, but now France and Italy have appeared as competitors in the
industry. The amount they make, however, is at present inconsiderable.

A submarine
cable consists of three portions: the conductor, or central copper
wire, through which the electric current passes; the insulator, or
gutta-percha covering, designed to prevent the escape of electricity;
and the sheathing, or outer steel wires, added to give the cable sufficient
strength to be proof against the strain of laying and picking up.
The conductor, which usually consists of six fine copper wires stranded
round a central one, has three coverings of gutta-percha alternated
with a sticky compound, to make them adhere perfectly together. The
smallest air-hole or pin-prick causes a fault in the cable, which
the current rapidly develops till signalling becomes impossible. Gutta-percha
is not an absolute insulator of electricity, but its conductivity
is so small, that it may be said to stand in the same relation to
copper as the rate of a body moving through 1 ft. in 6,700 years is
to the velocity of light.

As the completed cable
leaves the machine, it is coiled into large tanks and covered with
water to preserve it in good condition till the ship is ready to receive
it. The tanks are built near to the water's edge, so that the loading
of the ship, which lies in the river, may be carried on as conveniently
as possible. The loading itself is an interesting process to watch.
The cable is hauled out of the tanks by a temporary engine on the
deck of the ship, and is supported in the space between ship and shore
by passing over running blocks suspended from scaffolding, which is
erected in two or three empty barges, moored fore and aft. On reaching
the deck, the cable is let down into one of the tanks with which all
telegraph ships are provided. Here a number of men are stationed to
coil it in regular turns around a central cone. One of them receives
it as it descends, and running round brings it within reach of the
others, who place it close against the preceding turn. In the case
of large tanks and a heavy type of cable, this man's work is very
hard, and he has to be relieved at frequent intervals. With a light
type of cable the rate of coiling is sometimes as high as six knots
an hour.

Paying out cable from the bows - SS
"Buccaneer."

The size of the tanks
in a telegraph ship is an important point in cable-laying, for the
larger they are, the wider is the margin of safety with regard to
the speed of paying out. The Silvertown, belonging to the Silvertown
Telegraph Works Company, is the largest ship in the cable fleet. Her
three tanks are 30 ft. in depth and average 50 ft. in diameter. Their
cubical contents are one-third greater than those of the late Great
Eastern. The size of the tanks gives the vessel a large beam,
and the bridge is 55 ft. broad, which is one foot in excess of London
Bridge. Her draught when fully loaded is 31 ft., the greatest draught
of any ship afloat.

Previously to laying a cable, it is
necessary to take careful soundings over the intended route. This is done either by the
vessel which brings out the cable or by some other telegraph ship beforehand. Sounding
plays a very important part in submarine telegraphy, for sudden variations of depth, if
unexpected and not allowed for, often prove fatal to a cable.

Paying-out machinery on the SS "Dacia."

The sounding apparatus is usually placed
at the stern of the vessel, and its principal feature is a drum about 2 ft. in diameter,
on which is coiled some 4,000 fathoms of fine pianoforte wire. By means of this wire the
sounder is lowered to, and recovered from, the bottom. In order to accelerate the speed of
sinking, a heavy weight, in the form of an oval shot of 20 lb. to 60 lb., is added, and,
by an ingenious piece of mechanism in the sounder, becomes detached on touching the
ground, so that the strain on the wire during recovery is considerably lessened. On
account of the friction augmenting with the increasing length of wire in the water, the
sounder sinks slower and slower the farther it goes. Still, the average rate for descent
is over 100 fathoms a minute, and for recovery somewhat less. A complete sounding in 2,000
fathoms, or nearly 2 1/3 statute miles, has been known to occupy barely 38 min. from the
time when the sounder plunged into the water to the time of its reappearance at the
surface.

Paying-out machinery on the
SS "Silvertown."

When the cable is all on board, and the
final tests have been taken, the ship leaves for her destination. Arrived here, the first
care of the engineer-in-chief is to select a suitable place for landing the cable. As this
must be well clear of area in which ships are accustomed to anchor, it is often three or
four miles from the town, and is connected with by means of a land line or a bay cable.
When the spot has been chosen the carpenters are sent ashore to erect the cable hut which
has been brought out on the ship. The vessel is then anchored as near as possible to the
hut, and preparations are made to land the shore end. The method followed by the
"Silvertown" Company is to attach two "spider sheaves," or large
V-shaped wheels, to sand anchors securely buried on the beach and about sixty yards apart.
A strong line is then run from the ship round these two wheels and back again. One end is
secured to the end of the cable, and the other end is hauled on to by the heaving-in
machinery on board. The cable end itself has already been brought out of the tank to the
stern of the vessel. On its way it takes three turns round the paying-out drum, and thence
passes under the dynamometer, a machine for measuring the strain on the cable during
laying.

When all is ready the word is given to
heave-in on the line, and the cable starts on its journey to the shore. In order to
prevent it sinking to the bottom on its way, large india-rubber balloon buoys, nearly a
yard in diameter, are attached at intervals of 50 ft. to 60 ft., and support it 2 ft. or 3
ft. below the surface. Meanwhile a trench has been opened up from the shore to the hut, to
receive the cable and shelter it from the injurious effects of exposure to the sun. On
reaching the shore it is laid along this trench and the end inserted through the flooring
into the hut, where it is connected to the speaking instruments, and establishes
communication with the ship.

India-rubber balloon buoy

The cable is now released from the buoys,
and when the cable hands have returned to the ship, the anchor is weighed, and
"paying out" commences. The rate, at first slow, is considerably accelerated on
reaching the lighter type of cable, and the Silvertown can lay at the rate of nine
knots and sometimes even ten knots, the size of her tanks making the operation free from
danger. The first shore end is usually buoyed some ten to twenty miles from shore, and
then the vessel steams on to land the shore end at the second of the two places which are
to be put in telegraphic communication. If the cable is a long one, such as an Atlantic
cable, it will take at least ten or twelve days. Relays of watches give unremitting
attention to every detail of the work. The engineer-in-chief decides the amount of slack
cable - that is, cable in excess of the distance travelled - which the depth and the
character of the sea bottom necessitate.

The rate of paying out is regulated by
varying the amount of the weights on the paying-out drum. A man is stationed at a
hand-wheel in front of the dynamometer to watch the strain it registers, and to increase
or decrease the pressure of the brakes, according as this strain is too little or too
great. In the tank from which the cable is being paid out, half-a-dozen men are employed
removing the thin laths of wood between the flakes, and keeping watch on the cable, as it
rises from its bed like an interminable snake, and ascends wriggling and twisting to the
eye-hole at the top of the tank. The foreman stands above, close to an electric bell-push
communicating with the engine-room, ready to ring "stop her" directly anything
goes wrong. The enormous strain thrown upon a cable by a foul in the tanks may be better
understood when it is known that, if paying out in 2,900 fathoms at only 6 1/2 knots an
hour, from the stern of the ship to the spot where the cable touches the ground there is a
length of no less than twenty-seven statute miles, a particular point of cable taking over
three hours to reach the bottom.

But perhaps the most interesting work is
to be seen in the testing-room. Here the electrician sits at his post in front of an array
of testing instruments, with their bright brass terminals and glossy ebonite bases, and
watches the small round spot of light, thrown by the mirror of the galvanometer, as it
quivers on the darkened scale. Every five minutes, almost to the second, this small spot
gives a sudden leap, proving that the electrician left ashore in the hut has sent his
signal up to time, and that the continuity of the inner wire remains unbroken. Should the
spot suddenly vanish from the scale, and not return, the electrician knows that a fault
has developed, the engineer-in-chief is at once informed, and the ship is stopped. The
cable is then picked up with a grapnel, several kinds of which are shown in the next
illustration. When the fault comes on board, it is cut out, the two ends spliced, and
paying out resumed.

SS "Silvertown" landing
shore end at Fernando Noronha

At length the ship
comes up to the buoy attached to the cable which was the first to
be laid, the end is hauled on board and spliced to the cable which
the ship has been paying out, and which has been cut and brought round
to the bows for the purpose. On the completion of the splice, it is
carefully lowered over the bows by a couple of manila ropes, and when
it is well clear of the ship the signal is given, two men with sharp
axes sever the two ropes, and the cable disappears with a farewell
swish beneath the surface.

The interest of a cable expedition is not
confined to the work alone. Cable engineers are the greatest travellers of any profession,
the Navy, of course, excepted. An officer in the mercantile marine is not, as a rule,
acquainted with as many coasts as a submarine telegraph engineer his equal in age. For a
ship's officer, after his apprenticeship in sailing vessels, usually enters a line of
steamers which call, voyage after voyage, at the same places with unvarying routine;
whereas a cable engineer may go to a different part of the world with every trip. At one
season of the year he is laying a cable at some small settlement on the West Coast of
Africa, consisting of barely half-a-dozen European inhabitants, and so little known that
even its position is not properly located on the Admiralty charts. A few months later he
is putting in a new shore end at one of the busy Australian ports. Plenty of adventures
lie in his path. Sometimes he is on the coast of a South American Republic at the height
of a revolution, and encounters all the difficulties and even risks of laying cable from
one port in the hands of the Government to another in the hands of its opponents. On one
occasion the late King of Dahomey, before his power had been shattered by the French, sent
a message to the cable engineer, who had erected a hut on what His Majesty considered to
be his territory, that he would come down with his amazons and "sweep the white men
into the sea, if it were not removed at once.

Various kinds of grapnels and a
mushroom anchor

Less hazardous, but
considerably more irksome, are the vexatious local regulations of
small Colonial ports. On arriving at a French settlement on the West
Coast of Africa, a telegraph ship from Pernambuco was put in quarantine,
although she had been twenty-two days at sea, and the climate of the
West Coast at that season of the year was far more deadly than Brazil.
Leave was, however, granted to land the cable at a certain spot, which
was to be roped off and guarded by a cordon of soldiers. There was
a heavy surf, through which Europeans never ventured except in native
canoes. Although none of these were allowed to approach the ship,
the engineer-in-chief determined to land the cable. Those who have
not tried to run an ordinary boat, propelled by oars, through West
African breakers, can have no idea of the difficulties of the undertaking,
but two boats succeeded in getting ashore with the necessary gear,
and the cable was landed in the course of the day. On the return journey,
however, both boats were capsized and stove in, and as the shore-party
could not expect the ship to send any more in such a surf, they returned
to the beach wet through, and prepared to spend the night on the sand.
The governor relented sufficiently to send down a tent, together with
food and change of clothes, which were delivered at the end of a pole,
and the Englishmen made themselves fairly comfortable. The following
morning the difficulty was surmounted by the crews of two native canoes
offering to take them on board and then undergo twenty-four days'
quarantine on shore, for which impending loss of liberty they were
amply compensated.

This is one of the many fixes in which a
cable engineer may at any time find himself, and their occurrence adds a sense of novelty,
if not always of undiluted pleasure, to his varied career.

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